Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:43:57.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Whose Devil? Which Details?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Gordon Belot
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Batterman has recently argued that fundamental theories are typically explanatorily inadequate, in that there exist physical phenomena whose explanation requires that the conceptual apparatus of a fundamental theory be supplemented by that of a less fundamental theory. This paper is an extended critical commentary on that argument: situating its importance, describing its structure, and developing a line of objection to it. The objection is that in the examples Batterman considers, the mathematics of the less fundamental theory is definable in terms of the mathematics of the fundamental theory, and that only the latter need be given a physical interpretation—so we can view the desired explanation as drawing only upon resources internal to the more fundamental physical theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 128 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Columbia University and at the 2003 Pacific APA. I would like to thank two anonymous referees, Mark Wilson, Larry Sklar, Tim Maudlin, and especially Bob Batterman for helpful comments and suggestions. This paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES-0135445. The online version of the paper, available as PITT-PHIL-SCI preprint 00001515, includes an appendix, omitted from the present version, that surveys recent results on quantum chaos.

References

Bates, Sean, and Weinstein, Alan (1997), Lectures on the Geometry of Quantization. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.Google Scholar
Batterman, Robert (2002), The Devil in the Details: Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berry, Michael, and Upstill, C. (1980), “Catastrophe Optics: Morphologies of Caustics and Their Diffraction Patterns”, in Wolf, Emil (ed.), Progress in Optics 18. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 257–346.Google Scholar
Boyer, Carl (1987), The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Colin de Verdière, Yves (1998), “Une Introduction à la Méchanique Semi-Classique”, Une Introduction à la Méchanique Semi-Classique 44:23–51.Google Scholar
Duistermaat, Johannes (1974), “Oscillatory Integrals, Lagrange Immersions, and Unfolding of Singularities”, Oscillatory Integrals, Lagrange Immersions, and Unfolding of Singularities 27:207–281.Google Scholar
Duistermaat, Johannes (1978), “The Light in the Neighborhood of a Caustic”, in Dold, Albrecht and Eckmann, Beno (eds.), Séminaire Bourbaki vol. 1976/77. Exposés 489–506. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 19–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul (1962), “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism”, in Feigl, Herbert and Maxwell, Grover (eds.), Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 28–97.Google Scholar
Feyerabend, Paul (1965), “Reply to Criticism: Comments on Smart, Sellars, and Putnam”, in Cohen, Robert and Wartofsky, Marx (eds.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 2: In Honor of Philipp Frank. New York: Humanities Press, 223–261.Google Scholar
Guillemin, Victor, and Sternberg, Shlomo (1977), Geometric Asymptotics. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helffer, Bernard (1997), “h-Pseudodifferential Operators and Applications: An Introduction”, in Rauch, Jeffrey and Simon, Barry (eds.), Quasiclassical Methods. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1–49.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl (1966), Philosophy of Natural Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl ([1969] 2001), “Reduction: Ontological and Linguistic Facets”, in Fetzer, James (ed.), The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel: Studies in Science, Explanation, and Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 189–207. Reprint. Originally published in Sidney Morgenbesser, Patrick Suppes, and Morton White (eds.), Philosophy, Science, and Method: Essays in Honor of Ernest Nagel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 179–199.Google Scholar
Kemeny, John, and Oppenheim, Paul (1956), “On Reduction”, Philosophical Studies 7:6–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas (1996), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Ernest ([1949] 1960), “The Meaning of Reduction in the Natural Sciences”, in Danto, Arthur and Morgenbesser, Sidney (eds.), Philosophy of Science. New York: Meridian Books, 288–312. Reprint. Originally published in R. Stauffer (ed.), Science and Civilization. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 99–145.Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernest (1961), The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Ernest ([1970] 1979), “Issues in the Logic of Reductive Explanations”, in Nagel, Ernest, Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy and History of Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 95–117. Reprint. Originally published in Howard Keifer and Milton Munits (eds.), Mind, Science, and History. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 117–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussenzveig, Herch (1977), “The Theory of the Rainbow”, The Theory of the Rainbow 236 (4): 116–127..Google Scholar
Olscamp, Paul (ed.) (1965), Descartes: Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl (1957), “The Aim of Science”, The Aim of Science 1:24–35.Google Scholar
Pruppacher, Hans, and Klett, James (1997), Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Redhead, Michael (2004), “Asymptotic Reasoning”, Asymptotic Reasoning 35:527–530.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans (1951), The Rise of the Scientific Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robert, Didier (1998), “Semiclassical Approximation in Quantum Mechanics: A Survey of Old and Recent Mathematical Results”, Semiclassical Approximation in Quantum Mechanics: A Survey of Old and Recent Mathematical Results 71:44–116.Google Scholar
Sellars, Wilfred (1961), “The Language of Theories”, in Feigl, Herbert and Maxwell, Grover (eds.), Current Issues in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 57–77.Google Scholar
Sellars, Wilfred (1965), “Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism”, in Cohen, Robert and Wartofsky, Marx (eds.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 2: In Honor of Philipp Frank. New York: Humanities Press, 171–204.Google Scholar
Sklar, Lawrence (1967), “Types of Inter-Theoretic Reduction”, Types of Inter-Theoretic Reduction 18:109–124.Google Scholar
Sklar, Lawrence (2003), “Comments on R. Batterman: The Devil in the Details”, unpublished paper given at the Pacific APA, 2003.Google Scholar
Tricker, R. A. R. (1970), Introduction to Meteorological Optics. London: Mills and Boon.Google Scholar
Uribe, Alejandro (2000), “Trace Formulae”, in Pérez-Esteva, Salvador and Villegas-Blas, Carlos (eds.), First Summer School in Analysis and Mathematical Physics. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 61–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varadarajan, Veeravalli (1997), “The Method of Stationary Phase and Applications to Geometry and Analysis on Lie Groups”, in Ørsted, Bent and Schlichtkrull, Henrik (eds.), Algebraic and Analytic Methods in Representation Theory. New York: Academic Press, 167–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Mark (2003), “Comments on The Devil in the Details”, unpublished paper given at the Pacific APA, 2003.Google Scholar